New Pattern English Quiz 2017 – Cloze Test (Based on New Format) – 1

Hello and welcome to exampundit. Here is a set of English Quiz based on the latest pattern which surfaced in the late 2016.

In the passage given below words
are given in bold, each followed by a number given in the brackets. Every word
in bold has five alternatives. Find the word which best suits the place. If the
given word does not suit the blank , mark “no change required” as the answer.

Mythology is rich with tales of
dragons and the magical properties their innards(1) _________possess. One of the most valuable bits was their blood.
Supposedly capable of curing respiratory and digestive disorders, it was widely
sought. A new study has provided a factual twist on these fictional
medicines. Barney Bishop and Monique van
Hoek, at George Mason University in Virginia, report in The Journal of Proteome Research that the
blood of the Komodo dragon, the largest living lizard on the planet, is loaded
with compounds that could be used as antibiotics.

Komodo dragons, which are native
to parts of Indonesia, ambush (2)
_________ large animals like water buffalo and deer with a bite to the throat.
If their prey does not fall immediately, the dragons rarely continue the fight.
Instead, they back away and let the mix of mild venom and dozens of pathogenic
bacteria found in their saliva finish the job. They track their prey until it succumbs, (3) ___________ whereupon
they can feast without a struggle. Intriguingly, though, Komodo dragons appear
to be resistant to bites inflicted by other dragons.

Most animals-not just Komodo
dragons-carry simple proteins known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as
general-purpose weapons against infection. But if the AMPs of Komodo dragons
are potent enough to let them shrug off
(4) __________otherwise-fatal bites from their fellow animals, they are
probably especially robust (5)
________. And that could make them a promising source of chemicals upon which
to base new antibiotics.

With that in mind, and working
with the St Augustine Alligator farm Zoological Park in Florida, Dr. Bishop
obtained fresh Komodo dragon blood. He examined the blood for peptides with
molecular weights, lengths, electrical charges and chemical characteristics
that were similar to those from known AMPs. He then analysed the peptides using
the mass of spectrometer and combination of commercial and home brewed (6) _________software to
identify which of the newly discovered peptides were likely (7) _________to have medicinal potential.

The team identified 48 potential
AMPs that had never been seen before. Their initial tests were equally
promising. Dr. Van Hoek exposed two species of pathogenic (8) ____________bacteria,Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, to eight of the
most promising peptides they had identified. The growth of both species of
bacteria was severelyhampered (9) _____________by seven of
the eight; the remaining peptide was active against only P.aeruginosa

Their results are noteworthy.
Antibiotic-proof bacteria are an increasing problem in hospitals. Such bugs are
now thought to kill some 700,000 people each year around the world, and P.aeruginosa and S.aureus are parental strains for some of the most menacing (10) _________types. On
February 27th the World Health Organisation named both in it’s
first-ever list of “priority pathogens”, for which drug resistance is a serious
problem. Dr Bishop’s findings hint that the blood of dragons may yet prove to
be as useful against disease as myths suggest.